Some long-awaited changes to Yahoo!, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: YHOO) most-used product, Yahoo! Mail, are now available. The company has had its flagship product in "Beta" for almost a year now, and the company is publicly rolling out a few new enhancements to the world's most popular web-based email service this week. But, will those changes help the company regain some former luster?

My guess is that a majority of Yahoo! Mail users will keep their accounts active since notifying hundreds (or thousands) of contacts of an email address changes is a huge pain. I used Yahoo! Mail for more than seven years, but changed to Google, Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gmail service back in 2005. After using Google's product, I was won over. For me, it's light years ahead of Yahoo!'s offering just based on threaded email conversations alone. Your mileage may vary, of course. But, Yahoo! must be doing something right, as it enjoys a huge lead over Google in this space (it has been around quite a bit longer, though).

Will the ads Yahoo! continues to display drive its customers away? It sure hasn't yet, and the company admits that Yahoo! Mail is central to growing its ad revenue. It's no surprise -- Yahoo!'s free email is stuffed with ads. It's another reason I abandoned it since when you're using email for work purposes, ads affect productivity, big time. Yahoo! Mail improvements include an enhancement in performance and speed along with a more refined version of the message search feature.

Add that to the capability to chat with Yahoo! Messenger users from right within Yahoo! Mail and text messaging directly from within Yahoo! Mail (wireless carrier email address not needed) makes for some neat additions. Are they enough to steal customers from Microsoft Inc.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Live Hotmail or Google's Gmail? At this time, I doubt it. It just needs to keep current customers happy.POP access, e-mail forwarding and no graphical ads.

This week, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced that it was bumping the amount of storage for its freely available Windows Live Mail from two gigabytes to four gigabytes. Yahoo!, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) bumped its free email storage limits from two gigabytes to unlimited storage earlier this year. What has Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) done in response? Well, the internet search giant has kept its free email storage level at 2.8 gigabytes, but it wants customers to pony up some cash for an upgrade.

Google will give its Gmail email users another six gigabytes of online storage for an additional $20 per year when its competitors are giving away more gigabytes for free. For a company known for giving away almost everything and making up revenues with highly successful advertising, this is sort of a surprise. Want even more storage from Google? The company will charge you $75 a year for 25 additional gigabytes and even let you have 250 gigabytes for $500 per year. At Yahoo! mail, by comparison, unlimited storage is still free. However, Yahoo! has checks built into its system to ensure that space is for large emails, not simply online file storage.

Is Google not making enough from ads automatically inserted into its Gmail offering and therefore wants to now charge customers who are heavy users of its email service? It sure appears that way, but maybe the company is just trying to get paying subscribers in its ranks instead of giving away everything for free and hoping that its advertising model doesn't ever slow down in terms of revenue growth. Even though it sounds like I am down on Google here, I applaud the company for making an effort to glean revenue from more than just one source -- those text ads that appear next to Google searches and Gmail email messages.

This week on the BloggingStockcast we talk about Nokia Corporation's (NYSE: NOK) new phone, the problem with the new Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Apple TV, Steve Jobs' recent Barron's Magazine's ranking, Blockbuster Inc. (NYSE:BBI) vs Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX), income inequality, Jim Cramer, and Yahoo! Inc.'s (NASDAQ:YHOO) new email developments. And all in three minutes to boot!




Want to be featured on BloggingStockcast? Post a link in the comments section to a video for our consideration. Tell us your favorite stock and why in one brief line and make sure to say "And you're watching the BloggingStockcast!"

In addition to Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) announcing that it will soon offer unlimited email storage to is email customers starting this May, the web company has now announced that it will open up is email platform to external developers who can add utilities, features, and other applications with the world's most popular web-based email service.

It's no surprise that Yahoo! is doing this. By far, Yahoo! Mail is the company's most-used feature among global customers, as it counts more than 250 million customers worldwide (according to the company). By comparison, Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gmail claims only 65 million customers after its launch back in 2004 (which was limited, but now it is available to anyone). Both are estimates though -- the companies are kind of tight-lipped on specifics.

Yahoo! wants to encourage developers to change and customize Yahoo! Mail to their liking in order to have more loyal customers. No new strategy here, as many web-based applications do the same thing. There is no way to please the entire customer base with a single offering, so companies let developers (and customers) change base applications to the way that suits their lifestyles and workflow.

Will this release allow Yahoo! to remain the web's most-used email service? It will help, and I don't see Yahoo! Mail giving up that title anytime soon. In this case, Yahoo!'s first-mover advantage in email helped it gain a very large head start in the market, even as Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) acquired Hotmail to compete better and Google released Gmail about seven years later than Yahoo! released its email product.

Google may be grabbing more headlines these days and may have a stock price that gets the media excited (along with everyone else), but Yahoo! dos have a shining star, and it is the company's email service. It will be quite a while before Yahoo! relinquishes that title.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) has announced that it will be giving customers of its Yahoo! Mail web-based email service unlimited storage starting in May. Yahoo! started playing catch-up to Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) a few years ago in the amount of space it provides to email customers. Now this latest move may make Google and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) step up to the plate and provide unlimited email storage as well.

Yahoo! Mail provided a measly 4 Megabytes of email storage back in 2004. Then Google's Gmail came along with a free 1 Gigabyte of storage and caused both Yahoo! and Microsoft to up their email size limits to match Google's. Google has since stepped up its completely free Gmail email service to over 2.8 Gigabytes, while Yahoo! Mail remained at 1 Gigabyte (for free, anyway).

The fact that Yahoo! Mail is, by far, the largest email provider on the planet makes this announcement quite influential. Will customers start sending more and more email messages containing huge video and picture attachments now that they have unlimited storage? Probably not, but Yahoo!'s move to give unlimited email storage away for free will most likely give it the best possible PR, while keeping Yahoo! Mail users glued to other Yahoo! properties. My guess is that Yahoo! knows this pretty darn well.

How many of you are Yahoo! email subscribers? I am willing to bet some of you are, even though AOL and Google both now offer gigabytes of free storage and a free email address as well, hoping to steal memory-hogging Yahoo!ites away. After all, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) does operate the world's largest consumer email service, with something like a quarter-billion email accounts. So, when changes come to Yahoo! mail, you can be sure they've been thoroughly thought-out.

After having used the new email service recently, I can say that it is much improved in terms of overall functionality than the previous version of Yahoo! mail. Yahoo!'s new service emulates a desktop email product like Microsoft Outlook, but is completely web-based. I won't go into the web-based AJAX technology behind it, but it certainly allows for a very clean email experience if you've used a desktop email program before (most of us have, is not still). Although I find Yahoo!'s mail very slow compared to Google's Gmail (which I use), it is still very usable.

The single-largest thorn in my side about using Yahoo!'s mail service is the non-relevant advertising that seems to occupy way too much of the visible real estate on the screen (unless you're using a 21-inch screen or something). Yahoo! seems to have ported its advertising strategy from the previous Yahoo! mail to the new version -- and I find it incredibly annoying. But, then again, Yahoo!'s mail service is very private -- the company does not scan customer email to provide advertising (hence, the non-relevancy).

So, for annoying and graphical ads, you get privacy - as opposed to Google's Gmail, which is very streamlined and fast, but somewhat invades privacy when Google's automated software provides text ads based on message content. Which do you choose? Let's not forget that AOL recently unveiled a 2GB free email address to anyone who wants one as well -- but I haven't used it that much yet.

As Douglas McIntyre mentioned this morning, AOL was set to launch new piece of desktop software today called OpenRide, which is really a new direction in customer approach from AOL -- and it's a welcome one. AOL's new OpenRide software integrates AOL email search, media and instant messaging on the same desktop screen.

This is nothing revolutionary. Or is it? For AOL the answer could be 'yes.' The company has tossed aside its quasi-proprietary interface and access method, opening the AOL world up to anyone. In fact, AOL has hedged its entire future pretty much on selling ads instead of selling services in a momentous $2 billion decision.

This new OpenRide software looks intriguing to me. One thing that caught me off-guard: it will also work with competitive email services from Google Gmail and Yahoo! Mail -- this is a huge one. Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX)'s AOL division is betting that by opening up its interface to competitive email services, it can retain user eyes on its OpenRide service that may not have used AOL's new software unless they had an AOL email address.

This is a new attempt at cross-functionality that would have been unheard of from AOL just a few years ago. It's what I think will allow OpenRide to succeed. Email is still the most important piece of Internet access for hundreds of millions of Internet users, although website access has to be there as well (if not at the top). AOL's decision to allow access to competitive email services shows that the world has been turned upside down in the face of making money with advertising -- not access fees.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) released today its new version of Yahoo! Mail. Up until now, the beta version was available only to a limited number of users, but starting today, the beta version will be available to U.S. users as well as 18 other markets. It remains a free service.

Yahoo! Mail will have a new interface that according to the press release works "with the speed and responsiveness of a desktop application." The new features of Yahoo! Mail include calendar integration, drag and drop e-mail organization, message preview and an integrated RSS reader.

Other features: map viewing of events, spam and virus protection, e-mail search of headers, bodies and attachments, tabbed e-mail messages viewing and navigation, keyboard shortcuts and right-click menus, and address autocomplete. The two features that really sound great to me and indeed they are according to other bloggers I've read, is the multiple e-mail messages tabbed viewing and the drag and drop option. While I use bloglines as my RSS reader at the moment, I could consider switching it to my Yahoo! Mail if it became more convenient.

Yahoo! Mail is the No. 1 Web mail service with Google Gmail far behind it. However, for Yahoo! Mail to keep its no. 1 position, it would still have to improve when compared to Gmail. One thing, as TechCrunch so well put, is a feature that I'm really missing in Yahoo! Mail -- the tabbed conversations. I'm fine with the lack of tagging, but it seems this feature could be important. Storage and attachment limits are also important. Finally, the amount of ads seems too much.

In other news, Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. also announced today it signed a license agreement with Yahoo Inc. Under the agreement, Yahoo! could deliver TV Guide branded interactive program guides to Yahoo's users. No other details were disclosed.

Yahoo! shares declined 14 cents today, or 0.48% to close at $29.03.